There's a lot of ice early in the winter which will eventually be causing a lot of flooding. We were out for a few caches on a very cold afternoon in Lake County. This was taken along the Chagrin River.

We stopped for a very nice Lake Metroparks multi. The deer at this park are very forward toward humans. While we were signing the log at the final stage, there were actually deer walking into the woods toward us.

I was really glad the warming pit near the sledding hill had a fire. I'm usually not a big fan of fires since more than anything they make your clothes smell, but the wind was just right to push the smoke away and the fire was really hot.

We spent the afternoon at Cleveland Museum of Art and stopped at La Place on the way home to buy a few items at the bookstore. One look at the line which wound through most of the bookstore convinced us hot chocolate sounded much better and had no lines.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Ali decided she really didn't like her Oregon 450 and wanted a 62S so I bought her the 62S for her birthday and she gave me the gently used 450 for mine. In the end, she really did not like the Oregon's touch screen. I admit they are impossible to use in a vehicle. Since I was still planning to use my Vista HCx for routing when traveling and really only looking for a gps for paperless caching, the Oregon is a good fit for me.

The Oregon now meant we could do Whereigo caches with my gps (and I could do them while traveling for work). There were five whereigo caches in the area we hadn't done so we decided to load up the Oregon and head out for them. It was a great plan except the Oregon no longer seems to be able to load new Whereigo cartridges. We both tried and both failed so we resorted to plan B which was trying the where you go app for my Droid. I had loaded the app previously, but found out I needed to update the app. I also needed to upload the cartridges to the phone. With the extra time getting the Droid ready, we were hoping to find three or four of the Whereigo's instead of the original five.

The photos are from the first Whereigo at West Creek. The Droid was flawless with the where you go app. The only problem we realized quickly was the Droid didn't have much charge for the battery. It is a work phone and I usually don't use it much on the weekend. In the end we had enough charge for two Whereigo's before the Droid gave out. They were fun caches.

After stopping for hot chocolate, we made our way to visit our favorite Christmas tree on the way home. A couple years ago a local newspaper noted how much this tree has grown. When we first moved to our home, it was about 40 feet. Now the tree is over 60 feet tall. It was a really dark evening and left only the outlines of the lights to see.

My new friend is an old friend. I had one of these when I was a kid. Actually, my parents did. It was an old unit made from glass and probably really dangerous. This unit appears to be a lot safer and seems to help.

The super meds did great work on my fever, but the coughing was still hard and violent. We canceled a caching day with friends so I could rest more. Despite that, I really wanted to get out for at least a short walk. JoesBar had placed a new cache at Sims Park in Euclid which seemed like a terrible idea to walk along Lake Erie in December. When Taranis posted his FTF and said there was no wind, the die was cast. He was right. The lake was like glass. The walk was slow, but Ali has learned to put up with my slowness on bad days and was great company. We had a great time and the blue sky was a bonus.

A 102 Fever for three days will get you these meds. It was a funny meeting with my doctor (of ten years). He asked, "What antibiotics work for you?" I responded, "I don't know. Which ones are there?" Despite taking chemo for eight years now, I have stayed healthy enough to not have had a need for antibiotics since I had a string of strep throat cases over twenty years ago. I'm usually pretty calm and let things progress. I bagged the calm when my breath started rattling. Almost two weeks of whatever I picked up has not been fun. I haven't gone this long without driving since I went to New Zealand three years ago.